There exist several types of financial markets in which securities, commodities, and other negotiable instruments are traded. An auction market, such as a stock exchange, is one such financial market. In an auction market, buyers and sellers congregate on an exchange floor and announce their respective bid prices (offer to buy) and ask prices (price acceptable to sell). A trade in any particular security will occur at no more than the highest price a buyer is willing to pay and at no less than the lowest price a seller is willing to accept.
Among the players on the floor of an exchange are specialist and floor brokers. A specialist cells out the best bid and ask prices received from the various brokers, ensures that trades are posted, facilitate trades, and acts to ensure liquidity. A floor broker roams the exchange floor and acts as an agent to transact orders on behalf of investors (buyers and sellers).
A typical transaction originates when an order is placed with an off-the-floor trading desk to buy or sell a particular security. The trading desk then conveys the order to an exchange clerk who notes the parameters of the order, including whether the order is a buy or sell order, the symbol of the security, the quantity, the price, any special conditions associated with the order, and the time that the order is placed. Clerks operate from various booths maintained on or near the trading floor by the trading and brokerage establishments.
After appropriate processing, the clerk delivers the order to a floor broker for execution. Traditionally, orders are transcribed onto order slips that are physically delivered to floor brokers by pages or runners. A floor broker executes an order, notes the executed order on a slip of paper, and subsequently returns the notated slip of paper to the clerk via a runner. In addition to buy and sell orders, investors may request a “look” from the floor of the exchange. In response to a “look” request, a broker notes his or her observations with respect to what is happening in the market for a particular security. The “look” information noted by the broker may vary depending on the particular broker and what he has observed. For example, “look” information may include recent buyer and seller identities, trade sizes and prices, appraisal of market interest, a broker's opinion and any other information that a broker may wish to provide.
There is currently a significant manual component to process an order once the order reaches the floor of an exchange. Typically, an order will be entered into a computerized order processing system of a trading establishment. For example, these orders can be entered by a trader 120 at a listed desk. The order is then routed to an order management system for exchange listed securities. The order is displayed via an order management system application in the trading booth that handles orders for the given security. An order ticket is then automatically printed in the appropriate booth. After the order prints, a clerk takes the ticket and prepares it for handoff, pages a broker, and acknowledges the order in the order management system. The broker, upon being paged, must return to the booth to get the machine-printed ticket and may briefly discusses any special handling instructions with the clerk. Alternately the broker may telephone the booth to get necessary information and write it on a piece of paper. A broker must also update running totals representing how many shares of a particular security to buy or sell, incorporating both pending and new orders. After the broker executes a trade for all or part of the various orders, the broker must convey some or all of the details of the trade to the booth. The broker can convey the information over the phone or write the information on a piece of paper and walk it back to the booth. Alternatively, the broker can send the paper to the booth via an exchange runner. Thus, as will be appreciated, a floor broker must often interrupt their trading by returning to the booth or telephoning the clerk. This introduces inefficiencies into the trading system and can also result in situations where a broker may be absent during a trading situation which would be particularly advantageous to the broker's clients.
A clerk typically records the verbal execution in an online management system and performs an allocation of a portion of the bought or sold shares of a security among a variety of orders. Contra breakdowns tracking what was traded with whom eventually arrive in the booth on a piece of paper if they were not attached to the verbal communication. This information is generally penned by the broker or by a specialist. The clerk files the contra breakdowns in a special location, to be picked up by a firm runner. The contra breakdowns are then taken to a bank of firm typists located near the exchange floor. The typists enter the information into a firm trading system. Generally, the contra information should be entered within an hour after a trade took place. The typists file the paper containing the verbal and written information. This paper is kept on hand for several days and is then archived. The entered information is both used by the trading firm's systems and the exchange's order reconciliation system (OCS).
It would be useful to have a system capable of achieving greater order processing efficiency. Orders need to be routed more quickly to brokers operating on the floor of the exchange, thereby leading to more timely customer service. In addition it would be useful to capture some of the order information digitally at the point of sale, whereby costly transcription errors can be reduced.
It would be of further use if the order and look information could be directly communicated to the floor brokers by means of a wireless handheld communication device, thus eliminating the need for brokers and/or runners to continually interrupt trading to visit or call booth clerks. In such a wireless system, it would be particularly advantageous if a customized communication protocol were used to communication with the handheld device, which protocol supported all required data communication types in a format which both simplified parsing and processing of transmitted messages and also reduced required messaging bandwidth.